Courageous and Responsible Followers by Colette Hopton, Seattle University

Thoughtful article on followership by Colette Hoption, faculty fellow at the Center for Business Ethics and an Associate Professor of Managment, Albers School of Business and Economics, Seattle University.

My current fellowship term exploring the responsibilities of leaders and followers began last July outside of Toronto. I joined international scholars and practitioners, including Ira Chaleff author of the pioneering book The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders, at the University of Waterloo’s inaugural Global Followership Conference.

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A highlight of this conference was co-presenting research with recent Seattle University graduate, and now Albers School alumnus, Mary Han. We examined the influence of female caregivers on young adults’ beliefs about followers. This Spring she and I welcomed the news that this work received the 2020 Albers Faculty-Student Research Collaboration Award and is now under review in a special issue of the journal Industrial and Commercial Training.

… conference sessions emphasized followers’ co-creation of leadership… We associate leadership with influence, motivation, vision and, importantly, courage. Why wouldn’t parallel notions help define followership?… If followers play a larger part in co-producing leadership, then were they partly to blame for leadership debacles? …

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